Rage of Angels (2 page)

“Mr. Stela, Michael Moretti is on trial for the murders of Eddie and Albert Ramos. Did you know them?”

“Oh, sure.”

“Were you present when they were killed?”

“Yeah.” His whole body seemed to twitch.

“Who did the actual killing?”

“Mike.” For a second, his eyes caught Michael Moretti’s eyes and Stela quickly looked away.

“Michael Moretti?”

“That’s right.”

“Why did the defendant tell you he wanted the Ramos brothers killed?”

“Well, Eddie and Al handled a book for—”

“That’s a bookmaking operation? Illegal betting?”

“Yeah. Mike found out they was skimmin’. He had to teach ’em a lesson ’cause they was his boys, you know? He thought—”

“Objection!”

“Sustained. The witness will stick to the facts.”

“The facts was that Mike tells me to invite the boys—”

“Eddie and Albert Ramos?”

“Yeah. To a little party down at The Pelican. That’s a private beach club.” His arm started to twitch again and Stela, suddenly aware of it, pressed against it with his other hand.

Jennifer Parker turned to look at Michael Moretti. He was watching impassively, his face and body immobile.

“What happened then, Mr. Stela?”

“I picked Eddie and Al up and drove ‘em to the parkin’ lot. Mike was there, waitin’. When the boys got outta the car, I moved outta the way and Mike started blastin’.”

“Did you see the Ramos brothers fall to the ground?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And they were dead?”

“They sure buried ‘em like they was dead.”

There was a ripple of sound through the courtroom. Di Silva waited until there was silence.

“Mr. Stela, you are aware that the testimony you have given in this courtroom is self-incriminating?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And that you are under oath and that a man’s life is at stake?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You witnessed the defendant, Michael Moretti, cold-bloodedly shoot to death two men because they had withheld money from him?”

“Objection! He’s leading the witness.”

“Sustained.”

District Attorney Di Silva looked at the faces of the jurors and what he saw there told him he had won the case. He turned to Camillo Stela.

“Mr. Stela, I know that it took a great deal of courage for you to come into this courtroom and testify. On behalf of the people of this state, I want to thank you.” Di Silva turned to Thomas Colfax. “Your witness for cross.”

Thomas Colfax rose gracefully to his feet. “Thank you, Mr. Di Silva.” He glanced at the clock on the wall, then turned to the bench. “If it please Your Honor, it is now almost noon. I would prefer not to have my cross-examination interrupted.
Might I request that the court recess for lunch now and I’ll cross-examine this afternoon?”

“Very well.” Judge Lawrence Waldman rapped his gavel on the bench. “This court stands adjourned until two o’clock.”

Everyone in the courtroom rose as the judge stood up and walked through the side door to his chambers. The jurors began to file out of the room. Four armed deputies surrounded Camillo Stela and escorted him through a door near the front of the courtroom that led to the witness room.

At once, Di Silva was engulfed by reporters.

“Will you give us a statement?”

“How do you think the case is going so far, Mr. District Attorney?”

“How are you going to protect Stela when this is over?”

Ordinarily Robert Di Silva would not have tolerated such an intrusion in the courtroom, but he needed now, with his political ambitions, to keep the press on his side, and so he went out of his way to be polite to them.

Jennifer Parker sat there, watching the District Attorney parrying the reporters’ questions.

“Are you going to get a conviction?”

“I’m not a fortune teller,” Jennifer heard Di Silva say modestly. “That’s what we have juries for, ladies and gentlemen. The jurors will have to decide whether Mr. Moretti is innocent or guilty.”

Jennifer watched as Michael Moretti rose to his feet. He looked calm and relaxed.
Boyish
was the word that came to Jennifer’s mind. It was difficult for her to believe that he was guilty of all the terrible things of which he was accused.
If I had to choose the guilty one
, Jennifer thought,
I’d choose Stela, the Twitcher.

The reporters had moved off and Di Silva was in conference with members of his staff. Jennifer would have given anything to hear what they were discussing.

Jennifer watched as a man said something to Di Silva, detached himself from the group around the District Attorney, and hurried over toward Jennifer. He was carrying a large manila envelope. “Miss Parker?”

Jennifer looked up in surprise. “Yes.”

“The Chief wants you to give this to Stela. Tell him to refresh his memory about these dates. Colfax is going to try to tear his testimony apart this afternoon and the Chief wants to make sure Stela doesn’t foul up.”

He handed the envelope to Jennifer and she looked over at Di Silva.
He remembered my name
, she thought.
It’s a good omen.

“Better get moving. The D.A. doesn’t think Stela’s that fast a study.”

“Yes, sir.” Jennifer hurried to her feet.

She walked over to the door she had seen Stela go through. An armed deputy blocked her way.

“Can I help you, miss?”

“District Attorney’s office,” Jennifer said crisply. She took out her identification card and showed it. “I have an envelope to deliver to Mr. Stela from Mr. Di Silva.”

The guard examined the card carefully, then opened the door, and Jennifer found herself inside the witness room. It was a small, uncomfortable-looking room containing a battered desk, an old sofa and wooden chairs. Stela was seated in one of them, his arm twitching wildly. There were four armed deputies in the room.

As Jennifer entered, one of the guards said, “Hey! Nobody’s allowed in here.”

The outside guard called, “It’s okay, Al. D.A.’s office.”

Jennifer handed Stela the envelope. “Mr. Di Silva wants you to refresh your recollection about these dates.”

Stela blinked at her and kept twitching.

As Jennifer was making her way out of the Criminal Courts Building on her way to lunch, she passed the open door of a deserted courtroom. She could not resist stepping inside the room for a moment.

There were fifteen rows of spectators’ benches on each side of the rear area. Facing the judge’s bench were two long tables, the one on the left marked
Plaintiff
and the one on the right marked
Defendant.
The jury box contained two rows of eight chairs each.
It’s an ordinary courtroom
, Jennifer thought,
plain—even ugly—but it’s the heart of freedom.
This room and all the courtrooms like it represented the difference between civilization and savagery. The right to a trial by a jury of one’s peers was what lay at the heart of every free nation. Jennifer thought of all the countries in the world that did not have this little room, countries where citizens were taken from their beds in the middle of the night and tortured and murdered by anonymous enemies for undisclosed reasons: Iran,
Uganda, Argentina, Peru, Brazil, Romania, Russia, Czechoslovakia…the list was depressingly long.

If the American courts were ever stripped of their power
, Jennifer thought,
if citizens were ever denied the right to a trial by jury, then America would cease to exist as a free nation.
She was a part of the system now and, standing there, Jennifer was filled with an overwhelming feeling of pride. She would do everything she could to honor it, to help preserve it. She stood there for a long moment, then turned to leave.

From the far end of the hall there was a distant hum that got louder and louder, and became pandemonium. Alarm bells began to ring. Jennifer heard the sound of running feet in the corridor and saw policemen with drawn guns racing toward the front entrance of the courthouse. Jennifer’s instant thought was that Michael Moretti had escaped, had somehow gotten past the barrier of guards. She hurried out into the corridor. It was bedlam. People were racing around frantically, shouting orders over the din of the clanging bells. Guards armed with riot guns had taken up positions at the exit doors. Reporters who had been telephoning in their stories were hurrying into the corridor to find out what was happening. Far down the hall, Jennifer saw District Attorney Robert Di Silva wildly issuing instructions to half a dozen policemen, his face drained of color.

My God! He’s going to have a heart attack,
Jennifer thought.

She pushed her way through the crowd and moved toward him, thinking that perhaps she could be of some use. As she approached, one of the deputies who had been guarding Camillo Stela looked up and saw Jennifer. He raised an arm and pointed to her, and five seconds later Jennifer Parker found herself being grabbed, handcuffed and placed under arrest.

There were four people in Judge Lawrence Waldman’s chambers: Judge Waldman, District Attorney Robert Di Silva, Thomas Colfax, and Jennifer.

“You have the right to have an attorney present before you make any statement,” Judge Waldman informed Jennifer, “and you have the right to remain silent. If you—”

“I don’t need an attorney, Your Honor! I can explain what happened.”

Robert Di Silva was leaning so close to her that Jennifer could see the throbbing of a vein in his temple. “Who paid you to give that package to Camillo Stela?”

“Paid me? Nobody paid me!” Jennifer’s voice was quavering with indignation.

Di Silva picked up a familiar looking manila envelope from Judge Waldman’s desk. “
No one
paid you? You just walked up to my witness and delivered
this
?” He shook the envelope and the body of a yellow canary fluttered onto the desk. Its neck had been broken.

Jennifer stared at it, horrified. “I—one of your men—gave me—”

“Which one of my men?”

“I—I don’t know.”

“But you know he was one of my men.” His voice rang with disbelief.

“Yes. I saw him talking to you and then he walked over to me and handed me the envelope and said you wanted me to give it to Mr. Stela. He—he even knew my name.”

“I’ll bet he did. How much did they pay you?”

It’s all a nightmare,
Jennifer thought.
I’m going to wake up any minute and it’s going to be six o’clock in the morning, and I’m going to get dressed and go to be sworn in on the District Attorney’s staff.

“How much?”
The anger in him was so violent that it forced Jennifer to her feet.

“Are you accusing me of—?”

“Accusing you!” Robert Di Silva clenched his fists. “Lady, I haven’t even started on you. By the time you get out of prison you’ll be too old to spend that money.”

“There is no money.” Jennifer stared at him defiantly.

Thomas Colfax had been sitting back, quietly listening to the conversation. He interrupted now to say, “Excuse me, Your Honor, but I’m afraid this isn’t getting us anywhere.”

“I agree,” Judge Waldman replied. He turned to the District Attorney. “Where do you stand, Bobby? Is Stela still willing to be cross-examined?”

“Cross-examined? He’s a basket case! Scared out of his wits. He won’t take the stand again.”

Thomas Colfax said smoothly, “If I can’t cross-examine the prosecution’s chief witness, Your Honor, I’m going to have to move for a mistrial.”

Everyone in the room knew what that would mean: Michael Moretti would walk out of the courtroom a free man.

Judge Waldman looked over at the District Attorney. “Did you tell your witness he can be held in contempt?”

“Yes. Stela’s more scared of them than he is of us.” He turned to direct a venomous look at Jennifer. “He doesn’t think we can protect him anymore.”

Judge Waldman said slowly, “Then I’m afraid this court has no alternative but to grant the defense’s request and declare a mistrial.”

Robert Di Silva stood there, listening to his case being wiped out. Without Stela, he had no case. Michael Moretti was beyond his reach now, but Jennifer Parker was not. He was going to make her pay for what she had done to him.

Judge Waldman was saying, “I’ll give instructions for the defendant to be freed and the jury dismissed.”

Thomas Colfax said, “Thank you, Your Honor.” There was no sign of triumph in his face.

“If there’s nothing else…” Judge Waldman began.

“There is something else!” Robert Di Silva turned to Jennifer Parker. “I want her held for obstructing justice, for tampering with a witness in a capital case, for conspiracy, for…” He was incoherent with rage.

In her anger, Jennifer found her voice. “You can’t prove a single one of those charges because they’re not true. I—I may be guilty of being stupid, but that’s
all
I’m guilty of. No one bribed me to do anything. I thought I was delivering a package for you.”

Judge Waldman looked at Jennifer and said, “Whatever the motivation, the consequences have been extremely unfortunate. I am going to request that the Appellate Division undertake an investigation and, if it feels the circumstances warrant it, to begin disbarment proceedings against you.”

Jennifer felt suddenly faint. “Your Honor, I—”

“That is all for now, Miss Parker.”

Jennifer stood there a moment, staring at their hostile faces. There was nothing more she could say.

The yellow canary on the desk had said it all.

Jennifer Parker was not only on the evening news—she
was
the evening news. The story of her delivering a dead canary to the District Attorney’s star witness was irresistible. Every television channel had pictures of Jennifer leaving Judge Waldman’s chambers, fighting her way out of the courthouse, besieged by the press and the public.

Jennifer could not believe the sudden horrifying publicity that was being showered on her. They were hammering at her from all sides: television reporters, radio reporters and newspaper people. She wanted desperately to flee from them, but her pride would not let her.

“Who gave you the yellow canary, Miss Parker?”

“Have you ever met Michael Moretti?”

“Did you know that Di Silva was planning to use this case to get into the governor’s office?”

“The District Attorney says he’s going to have you disbarred. Are you going to fight it?”

To each question Jennifer had a tight-lipped “No comment.”

On the CBS evening news they called her “Wrong-Way Parker,” the girl who had gone off in the wrong direction. An ABC newsman referred to her as the “Yellow Canary.” On NBC, a sports commentator compared her to Roy Riegels, the football player who had carried the ball to his own team’s one-yard line.

In Tony’s Place, a restaurant that Michael Moretti owned, a celebration was taking place. There were a dozen men in the room, drinking and boisterous.

Michael Moretti sat alone at the bar, in an oasis of silence, watching Jennifer Parker on television. He raised his glass in a salute to her and drank.

Lawyers everywhere discussed the Jennifer Parker episode. Half of them believed she had been bribed by the Mafia, and the other half that she had been an innocent dupe. But no matter which side they were on, they all concurred on one point: Jennifer Parker’s short career as an attorney was finished.

She had lasted exactly four hours.

She had been born in Kelso, Washington, a small timber town founded in 1847 by a homesick Scottish surveyor who named it for his home town in Scotland.

Jennifer’s father was an attorney, first for the lumber companies that dominated the town, then later for the workers in the sawmills. Jennifer’s earliest memories of growing up were filled with joy. The state of Washington was a storybook place for a child, full of spectacular mountains and glaciers and national parks. There were skiing and canoeing and, when she was older, ice climbing on glaciers and pack trips to places with wonderful names: Ohanapecosh and Nisqually and Lake
Cle Elum and Chenuis Falls and Horse Heaven and the Yakima Valley. Jennifer learned to climb on Mount Rainier and to ski at Timberline with her father.

Her father always had time for her, while her mother, beautiful and restless, was mysteriously busy and seldom at home. Jennifer adored her father. Abner Parker was a mixture of English and Irish and Scottish blood. He was of medium height, with black hair and green-blue eyes. He was a compassionate man with a deep-rooted sense of justice. He was not interested in money, he was interested in people. He would sit and talk to Jennifer by the hour, telling her about the cases he was handling and the problems of the people who came into his unpretentious little office, and it did not occur to Jennifer until years later that he talked to her because he had no one else with whom to share things.

After school Jennifer would hurry over to the courthouse to watch her father at work. If court was not in session she would hang around his office, listening to him discuss his cases and his clients. They never talked about her going to law school; it was simply taken for granted.

When Jennifer was fifteen she began spending her summers working for her father. At an age when other girls were dating boys and going steady, Jennifer was absorbed in lawsuits and wills.

Boys were interested in her, but she seldom went out. When her father would ask her why, she would reply, “They’re all so
young
, Papa.” She knew that one day she would marry a lawyer like her father.

On Jennifer’s sixteenth birthday, her mother left town with the eighteen-year-old son of their next-door neighbor, and Jennifer’s father quietly died. It took seven years for his heart to stop beating, but he was dead from the moment he heard the news about his wife. The whole town knew and was sympathetic, and that, of course, made it worse, for Abner Parker was a proud man. That was when he began to drink. Jennifer
did everything she could to comfort him but it was no use, and nothing was ever the same again.

The next year, when it came time to go to college, Jennifer wanted to stay home with her father, but he would not hear of it.

“We’re going into partnership, Jennie,” he told her. “You hurry up and get that law degree.”

When she was graduated she enrolled at the University of Washington in Seattle to study law. During the first year of school, while Jennifer’s classmates were flailing about in an impenetrable swamp of contracts, torts, property, civil procedure and criminal law, Jennifer felt as though she had come home. She moved into the university dormitory and got a job at the Law Library.

Jennifer loved Seattle. On Sundays, she and an Indian student named Ammini Williams and a big, rawboned Irish girl named Josephine Collins would go rowing on Green Lake in the heart of the city, or attend the Gold Cup races on Lake Washington and watch the brightly colored hydroplanes flashing by.

There were great jazz clubs in Seattle, and Jennifer’s favorite was Peter’s Poop Deck, where they had crates with slabs of wood on top instead of tables.

Afternoons, Jennifer, Ammini and Josephine would meet at The Hasty Tasty, a hangout where they had the best cottagefried potatoes in the world.

There were two boys who pursued Jennifer: a young, attractive medical student named Noah Larkin and a law student named Ben Munro; and from time to time Jennifer would go out on dates with them, but she was far too busy to think about a serious romance.

The seasons were crisp and wet and windy and it seemed to rain all the time. Jennifer wore a green-and-blue-plaid lumber
jacket that caught the raindrops in its shaggy wool and made her eyes flash like emeralds. She walked through the rain, lost in her own secret thoughts, never knowing that all those she passed would file away the memory.

In spring the girls blossomed out in their bright cotton dresses. There were six fraternities in a row at the university, and the fraternity brothers would gather on the lawn and watch the girls go by, but there was something about Jennifer that made them feel unexpectedly shy. There was a special quality about her that was difficult for them to define, a feeling that she had already attained something for which they were still searching.

Every summer Jennifer went home to visit her father. He had changed so much. He was never drunk, but neither was he ever sober. He had retreated into an emotional fortress where nothing could touch him again.

He died when Jennifer was in her last term at law school. The town remembered, and there were almost a hundred people at Abner Parker’s funeral, people he had helped and advised and befriended over the years. Jennifer did her grieving in private. She had lost more than a father. She had lost a teacher and a mentor.

After the funeral Jennifer returned to Seattle to finish school. Her father had left her less than a thousand dollars and she had to make a decision about what to do with her life. She knew that she could not return to Kelso to practice law, for there she would always be the little girl whose mother had run off with a teen-ager.

Because of her high scholastic average, Jennifer had interviews with a dozen top law firms around the country, and received several offers.

Warren Oakes, her criminal law professor, told her: “That’s a real tribute, young lady. It’s very difficult for a woman to get into a good law firm.”

Jennifer’s dilemma was that she no longer had a home or roots. She was not certain where she wanted to live.

Shortly before graduation Jennifer’s problem was solved for her. Professor Oakes asked her to see him after class.

“I have a letter from the District Attorney’s office in Manhattan, asking me to recommend my brightest graduate for his staff. Interested?”

New York.
“Yes, sir.” Jennifer was so stunned that the answer just popped out.

She flew to New York to take the bar examination, and returned to Kelso to close her father’s law office. It was a bittersweet experience, filled with memories of the past and it seemed to Jennifer that she had grown up in that office.

She got a job as an assistant in the law library of the university to tide her over until she heard whether she had passed the New York bar examination.

“It’s one of the toughest in the country,” Professor Oakes warned her.

But Jennifer
knew.

She received her notice that she had passed and an offer from the New York District Attorney’s office on the same day.

One week later, Jennifer was on her way east.

She found a tiny apartment (
Spc W/U fpl gd loc nds sm wk,
the ad said) on lower Third Avenue, with a fake fireplace in a steep fourth-floor walk-up.
The exercise will do me good,
Jennifer told herself. There were no mountains to climb in Manhattan, no rapids to ride. The apartment consisted of a small living room with a couch that turned into a lumpy bed, and a tiny bathroom with a window that someone long ago had painted over with black paint, sealing it shut. The furniture looked like something that could have been donated by the Salvation Army.
Oh, well, I won’t be living in this place long.
Jennifer thought.
This is just temporary until I prove myself as a lawyer.

That had been the dream. The reality was that she had been in New York less than seventy-two hours, had been thrown off the District Attorney’s staff and was facing disbarment.

Jennifer quit reading newspapers and magazines and stopped watching television, because wherever she turned she saw herself. She felt that people were staring at her on the street, on the bus, and at the market. She began to hide out in her tiny apartment, refusing to answer the telephone or the doorbell. She thought about packing her suitcases and returning to Washington. She thought about getting a job in some other field. She thought about suicide. She spent long hours composing letters to District Attorney Robert Di Silva. Half the letters were scathing indictments of his insensitivity and lack of understanding. The other half were abject apologies, with a plea for him to give her another chance. None of the letters was ever sent.

For the first time in her life Jennifer was overwhelmed with a sense of desperation. She had no friends in New York, no one to talk to. She stayed locked in her apartment all day, and late at night she would slip out to walk the deserted streets of the city. The derelicts who peopled the night never accosted her. Perhaps they saw their own loneliness and despair mirrored in her eyes.

Over and over, as she walked, Jennifer would envision the courtroom scene in her mind, always changing the ending.

A man detached himself from the group around Di Silva and hurried toward her. He was carrying a manila envelope.

Miss Parker?

Yes.

The Chief wants you to give this to Stela.

Jennifer looked at him coolly. Let me see your identification, please.

The man panicked and ran.

A man detached himself from the group around Di Silva and hurried toward her. He was carrying a manila envelope.

Miss Parker?

Yes.

The Chief wants you to give this to Stela. He thrust the envelope into her hands.

Jennifer opened the envelope and saw the dead canary inside. I’m placing you under arrest.

A man detached himself from the group around Di Silva and hurried toward her. He was carrying a manila envelope. He walked past her to another young assistant district attorney and handed him the envelope. The Chief wants you to give this to Stela.

She could rewrite the scene as many times as she liked, but nothing was changed. One foolish mistake had destroyed her. And yet—who said she was destroyed? The press? Di Silva? She had not heard another word about her disbarment, and until she did she was still an attorney.
There are law firms that made me offers
, Jennifer told herself.

Filled with a new sense of resolve, Jennifer pulled out the list of the firms she had talked to and began to make a series of telephone calls. None of the men she asked to speak to was in, and not one of her calls was returned. It took her four days to realize that she was the pariah of the legal profession. The furor over the case had died down, but everyone still remembered.

Jennifer kept telephoning prospective employers, going from despair to indignation to frustration and back to despair again. She wondered what she was going to do with the rest of her life, and each time it came back to the same thing: All she wanted to do, the one thing she really cared about, was to practice law. She was a lawyer and, by God, until they
stopped her she was going to find a way to practice her profession.

She began to make the rounds of Manhattan law offices. She would walk in unannounced, give her name to the receptionist and ask to see the head of personnel. Occasionally she was granted an interview, but when she was, Jennifer had the feeling it was out of curiosity. She was a freak and they wanted to see what she looked like in person. Most of the time she was simply informed there were no openings.

At the end of six weeks, Jennifer’s money was running out. She would have moved to a cheaper apartment, but there
were
no cheaper apartments. She began to skip breakfast and lunch, and to have dinner at one of the little corner dinettes where the food was bad but the prices were good. She discovered the Steak & Brew and Roast-and-Brew, where for a modest sum she was able to get a main course, all the salad she could eat, and all the beer she could drink. Jennifer hated beer, but it was filling.

When Jennifer had gone through her list of large law firms, she armed herself with a list of smaller firms and began to call on them, but her reputation had preceded her even there. She received a lot of propositions from interested males, but no job offers. She was beginning to get desperate.
All right
, she thought defiantly,
if no one wants to hire me, I’ll open my own law office.
The catch was that that took money. Ten thousand dollars, at least. She would need enough for rent, telephone, a secretary, law books, a desk and chairs, stationery…she could not even afford the stamps.